Lee County does not intend to develop the western part of the property. As part of the Development Order (permit for development) Lee County will stipulate that the western part of the parcel will be conserved as open space.

The facility will process clean bottles, cans, paper, cardboard and containers. It’s a fully indoor operation. Trucks tip the materials inside, the machinery is inside and the rolling stock is inside. The facility will accept household and business material; there will be inspections of inbound material to remove unacceptable materials.

Lee County closed on the property purchase on April 24, 2024, with construction tentatively planned for 2026 - 2027.

The facility will not be a waste-transfer station. There will be no wet garbage, no tire processing, no yard-waste grinding and no hazardous waste. (Deed restrictions prevent any hazardous waste processing.) There will not be any outdoor processing or dirt roads. No operations will take place close to houses.

All material is contained within the building. Any material that is not acceptable for recycling is reloaded and removed to Buckingham operations the same day it is received. The operator and Lee County inspect recycle loads daily. These inspections include individual carts at the curb and removing them from the residence, if necessary, before contaminated materials reach the facility.

An 18-month search by size, cost, zoning, transportation and seller willingness was conducted to identify a property with the specifications needed for the facility. County staff conducted an internal search of county-owned lands first. There was no land identified that would have avoided the purchase of a new parcel due to zoning, size and transportation infrastructure needs.

Yes. The Buckingham expansion will be used for other materials such as municipal solid waste (wet garbage), construction/demolition recycling, and yard waste grinding, which are all more intense uses than the proposed recycling facility. In addition, the Buckingham site has traffic constraints, as there are more than 1,100 truck entries per weekday.

Preliminary estimates are that the new MRF will serve 100-200 customer trucks per day.

Route trucks and tractor-trailers will enter from the present State Road 82 entrance, not from Treeline Avenue and not from Gateway Boulevard. Trucks now use the same arterial roads to get to the current facility, located nearby on Buckingham Road. Current traffic patterns are not expected to be affected. An estimated 100 to 200 vehicles per day are expected to use the site, mostly in early morning and late afternoon. Please watch this short video from Lee County’s Traffic Engineer for more information.